"I have no desire to be a burden to my family living out the remainder of my days restrained to a chair in a skilled nursing care facility. No control over my bowel and bladder I sit and wait...waiting and praying to die. I should have the freedom of choice to die with dignity. I can't see this happening here without a fight. There's too much money being made and to hell with what we think. Maybe it's time for us to fight for our rights."-Mr.R.
Mr. R., a friend of mine and senior citizen made these comments after reading the article below. What do you think? Would you prevent your parents who were merely "tired of life", tired of the aches and pains to cash it all in? What if it became the law of the land? We have living wills. Why not this?
Euthanasia Legal, Landmark Dutch Law Enters Force
Sunday, March 31, 2002
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Euthanasia became legal in the Netherlands Monday, the first country to permit mercy killing for the hopelessly ill who are desperate to die.The Dutch parliament sparked worldwide controversy last April when it voted to enshrine in law a practice the Netherlands had tolerated for two decades.But though opponents drew fearful parallels with Nazi Germany, Dutch doctors did not win a license to kill. They must obey strict rules or be liable for prosecution.Patients must face a future of unbearable, interminable suffering -- being "weary of life" is not enough -- and they must make a voluntary, well-considered request to die.Doctor and patient must be convinced there is no other solution, another physician must be consulted and life must be ended in a medically appropriate way.Some doctors say the fact that euthanasia is allowed is often a sufficient comfort in itself. "For many terminally ill people, the fact that they can choose to die is an immense consolation," says general practitioner Coot Kuipers of the southern village Uden.The landmark law has reverberated well beyond Dutch borders to countries as far away as Australia.Belgium has already moved in the same direction. Senators there voted in October in favor of a draft law setting conditions under which doctors may help the terminally ill die.French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, a trained doctor, said last year he would use the Dutch decision to press for the legalization of euthanasia in France, and has confessed to performing mercy killings himself in Vietnam and Lebanon.Debate is also raging in Australia -- whose Northern Territory became the first place in the world to legalize euthanasia in 1996 but saw the law overturned after nine months -- where a bowel cancer sufferer is begging for help to die.Australian grandmother Nancy Crick, 70, has chronicled her physical disintegration on the Internet and recently appealed for someone to give her a drug that would kill her painlessly.And in Britain, where assisting a suicide is punishable by up to 14 years in jail, a paralyzed woman last month won the right to die in a ground-breaking case.Fellow Briton Diane Pretty, a motor neurone disease sufferer seeking the legal right for her husband to help her die, is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights after British courts refused to offer him immunity from prosecution.Many still baulk at euthanasia -- not least the Netherlands' neighbor Germany, where Nazis exterminated thousands of handicapped children and mentally ill adults before and during World War Two.EUTHANASIA TOURISTS?The U.N. Human Rights Committee of independent experts criticized the Dutch law last July, saying it could lead to routine and insensitive mercy killing.The committee said it was not convinced the Dutch system would detect and prevent cases where pressure could be exerted on a patient to evade the legal criteria.It expressed concern that children aged 12 to 16 were eligible for euthanasia with parental backing and that checks were conducted only after patients died.Fears of an influx of "euthanasia tourists" were fanned last year when Turin magistrates began probing an Italian suspected of helping terminally ill people travel to the Netherlands to die.But the Dutch say the legal clause insisting doctor and patient must have a close relationship precludes such "tourism." The Dutch Voluntary Euthanasia Society (NVVE) says it fields many queries from foreigners but must always disappoint them."People from abroad have always thought it was easy to do it in the Netherlands, but in fact it's not," NVVE spokeswoman Walburg de Jong told Reuters.NVVE data show 2,123 reported Dutch cases of euthanasia in 2000, though the true number is likely to be higher since it is thought not all cases are reported to the coroner.Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok has called it "bloody nonsense" to say doctors have a license to kill.But Health Minister Els Borst raised eyebrows when she said just days after the euthanasia law was passed that very old people who were sick of life should be allowed a suicide pill.A Dutch doctor was convicted last December because he assisted the 1998 death of a former senator who was "tired of life." He was not given a prison sentence because the court ruled that he acted out of compassion for his patient.Though the new law was not yet in force, the court considered the legislation in reaching its judgement in what was seen as a test case seeking to define the limits of euthanasia.